The guilty verdict reached in the Roy Collins murder trial yesterday was a “victory”, according to the solicitor who represented mum-of-two Baiba Saulite before her murder.

Dublin solicitor John Hennessy has previously been threatened by the Dundon-McCarthy because he represented the young mother before her death in 2006.

Yesterday, Wayne Dundon (36) Nathan Killeen (24) were found guilty of the murder of the 35-year-old Roy Collins in Limerick in 2009.

“When I read that story in the paper, my main focus or satisfaction was from the conviction [of Dundon and Killeen],” Mr Hennessy told independent.ie.

“The dogs in the street know that the Dundon-McCarthy gang stretched way beyond Limerick and Dublin in the context of gangland enemies of the State.”

Today, the Irish Independent revealed that Ms Saulite was shot dead in Swords after the partner of Wayne Dundon's younger sister Annabel, Joe Hehir, brought a map from Limerick to Dublin and passed it to Saulite's assassin.

Gardai in Limerick received vital information on the murder of the 28-year-old Latvian woman after Hehir came forward to officers more than a year after Collins's death.

Unknown to Annabel, Hehir provided them with detailed statements on the murders of Collins and Saulite and his knowledge of them.

However, Hehir subsequently died suddenly at his Limerick home in Raheen Square, Ballinacurra-Weston, in May 2011 and could never provide testimony.

Hehir explained to officers that a map of Saulite's home estate in Swords, Dublin, was provided to John Dundon in prison by a criminal who wanted the mother murdered.

Convicted murderer Dundon was given the map which he passed on to his associates in Limerick.

Eventually, the map was given in secret by an associate of the Dundon gang, who has also been imprisoned as part of the garda crackdown on organised crime in Limerick, to Hehir.

Mr Hennessy told independent.ie that he has was “never privy” to information that was available to authorities and “what I found out, I learned through the papers or anecdotally through gardai, for example”.

“I don’t know if someone will ever be convicted for the murder of Baiba Saulite – I obviously hope so.”

But, while the Swords-based solicitor counts yesterday’s verdict as “a major victory”, he warns that the “the State should never allow itself to get into that situation again.

“Steve Collins called [the Dundon-McCarthy gang] terrorists and he’s absolutely right. Himself and his family are heroes – they should be proud of themselves,” he said.

“The victims Baiba Saulite, Anthony Campbell, Shane Geoghegan, Roy Collins and his family... it’s horrific when you sit down and think of the effect that one gang have had on the Irish state.”

“I have a fear that a repeat of that failure – and it is a failure – by the State to put themselves in that position again is a real possibility."